The Memory Game

‘Absolutely.’

‘Anyway, the truth about Alan’s behaviour became unavoidable. To cut the whole sordid story short, we discovered that the summer before Alan had been sleeping with a girl who was a friend of Natalie’s and mine. She was the same age as we were. She was called Chrissie Pilkington and she was a daughter of a local family, good friends of the Martellos, and she was at school with Natalie. It was awful.’

‘How did you discover?’

‘She told Natalie. Natalie told me. It was an odd thing, really, because we had this intense afternoon talking about it. I think I was more shocked than Natalie – she didn’t seem surprised, but she did seem, well, disgusted, I suppose. She was very cruel about him, about his beery breath and his paunch. I remember the way she imitated him being drunk. But then, after that, she never mentioned the subject again, and I didn’t either. I think that I knew it was forbidden.’

‘Did you say anything to Alan? Or to Martha?’

‘No, it never seemed the right time, really. But I told Theo. I guess that most of us younger lot must have known.’

‘What happened? What did you feel about all this?’

‘What happened? I don’t know, really, it sort of got lost in the chaos of Natalie’s disappearance. These things never lasted a long time for Alan and he probably used the awfulness over the disappearance as a way of making a break.’

‘And what did you feel about it?’

‘Different things. I always have where Alan is concerned. Sometimes I think he’s just an awful exploitative shit who would do anything, so long as it was what he wanted to do at a particular moment. And sometimes I think he’s just pathetic and weak and should be looked after or put up with. And sometimes I even think about him the way that people who don’t actually know him personally think about him : good old incorrigible Alan, a bit outrageous and flamboyant, but there’s nobody else quite like him and we’re lucky to have him. When I’m feeling close to Martha I feel most hostile, but then she’s probably quite stoical about it all.’

I was silent. My mind was a blank. I felt exhausted by it all. Alex was thinking too.

‘Sorry for being rude, Jane,’ he said.

‘You were a bit.’

He stood up and hauled his chair round so that I could see it. It was on castors. I could see the indentations in the carpet where it had stood. Was this the first time it had ever been moved?

‘Jane, we’re almost finished and I know you must be exhausted but I’d like us to try something. I had it in mind for later sessions, but it might just be worth a crack now.’

‘What?’

‘Bear with me for a moment, Jane. I want this process to be steered by you. I want to follow the clues that you leave for me. Now, we’ll be talking about lots of things, I hope, but I have this feeling that the black hole at the centre of it all is the day that Natalie disappeared, this conjunction, or near-conjunction, when you almost met.’

‘Yes. Well?’

‘It’s something I want to return to.’

‘I’m not sure there is anything more to go back to. It was a very long time ago.’

‘Yes, I realise that. But let’s try something. It’ll be good for you anyway. Let’s try a sort of exercise. I’d like you to lie back, really lie back, close your eyes and I’d like you to relax every bit of your body, starting with your feet and your legs, your body, down your arms and finally through your face and head. Does that feel good?’

‘Mmm.’

Alex’s voice was now almost like a hum in the background, like the buzzing of bees outside a window.

‘Now, Jane, without opening your eyes, I would like you to imagine that scene by the river on the day when Natalie disappeared. I don’t want you to describe it, I don’t want you to look at it. I’d like you to imagine yourself back there, sitting by the river. Put yourself back there. Can you do that?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re sitting down, aren’t you, with the hill behind your back?’

‘Yes.’

‘Describe it to me.’

‘I can feel the stone of Cree’s Top behind my back. On my right is the wood. The wood that’s between the river and the Stead. The River Col is on my left. I can see it flowing away from me. I can tell because of the pieces of paper I scrunch up and throw in. They drift away from me and then just as they drift round the bend they start to bobble across the little rapids, well, just shallow water across stones really, then they’re out of sight.’

‘What is the weather like?’

‘Hot, really hot. Mid-afternoon. I’m in the shade under a line of elms which are on my right forming the edge of the wood. The stone behind me feels cool.’

‘Do you do anything?’

My mind went blank, I stuttered something.

‘That’s all right, Jane, open your eyes. We’ll leave it there.’

I started to raise myself up.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘am I supposed to know why Alan Martello’s novel is called The Town Drain? Is it a quotation or something?’

‘Haven’t you read it?’

‘It’s on my list.’

‘I thought everybody had read it. The title comes from something that the Reverend Spooner is supposed to have said to one of his undergraduates. It goes something like, “You have hissed all my mystery lectures and tasted a whole worm. You must leave by the town drain.” You know, the down train is the train from Oxford to London.’

‘I suppose the joke works if you’ve read the book.’

‘It’s not really a joke, it’s meant to stand for an anti-Brideshead sort of disenchantment.’

‘Well, thank you for the lecturette, Jane. Perhaps I should be paying you something.’

I raised an eyebrow.

‘Now that really is a joke,’ Alex added hastily.

Twelve

When we were little – eight or nine years old – Natalie and I used to lie in bed at night and discuss what we were going to be when we grew up. I can see her now, hugging her knees through her nightie. We were both going to be beautiful and adored and have lots of children. We would always be friends, and visit each other’s large houses in the country. Everything was possible. It never occurred to me, when I said I was going to be a singer, that my singing voice sounded like a bullfrog’s croak. An off-key croak. My mother used to play me notes on the scuffed upright piano that Dad sold after she died, and I would try to sing them back to her. When the look of encouragement on her thin face didn’t waver, but remained there like a bright flag signalling patience, I knew that I hadn’t succeeded. I relinquished the idea of being a singer, and started selecting things I was good at: drawing, writing, numbers. What could you do with numbers? Before I was ten, I knew I wanted to be an architect, like my dad. I made models from old cardboard boxes, and drew impossible plans on graph paper stolen from my father’s desk. I made futuristic apartment blocks from empty match boxes. It became my territory, the place no one else invaded.

Natalie said she wanted to be a ballet dancer at first; then an actor; then a television announcer. She wanted